Both: Hey everyone! This is Jen and Greg with an update on our travels.
Greg: This time we are talking about the logistics of planning our extended trip and what items we had on our to-do list prior to leaving the country. So let's start with passports...
Jen: Ugh, passports...The worst part about the passport is taking a photo, I think.
Greg: Yeah, my photo wasn't great.
Jen: I mean, yours usually aren't but...
Greg: Awwww
Jen: (laughing) I couldn't let that one go...
Greg: The truth hurts.
Jen: Anyway. We got our original passports what 2014?
Greg: I think? Or 2013.
Jen: Yeah, so that's how long we've been wanting to do this.
Greg: Yeah.
Jen: But one reason or another, we didn't travel. Things came up, priorities kind of changed for a little bit and then we said, "oh, we need to renew these passports!"
Greg: That's right.
Jen: And a lot of countries - most countries - if it's too close to when it's about to expire they don't let you in. Fast forward 10 years from original passport...
Greg: Yeah...
Jen: And we had to get those done. Usually that's, that's pretty hard, but I think we got pretty lucky.
Greg: Well, I would not say it's luck I would say Nirav was watching out for us.
Jen: (interjects) Shout out, Nirav!
Greg: That's right. He gave us the link to an experimental online process for passport renewals that the government was doing.
Jen: But it wound up being pretty quick. So one of the other things we did was we registered our trip - our locations - where we're gonna be with the State Department in the event that things go wrong, anything happens, the US government will know that we are in that country and if we need help or assistance getting out. They'll know that they need to look for us.
Greg: I guess the other thing is the banks and then the credit cards and all that, right?
Jen: Yeah, so I don't know how many people told us, "don't forget to call your bank." Apparently a lot of them - or at least the ones we use - aren't requiring that. They say with their security they already send the notices so they'll send us large purchases or "suspicious" things.
Greg: Yeah, what they're not telling you is...because they already track your spending, they know you're about to leave the country. So you don't have to tell them.
Jen: (laughing) Eh, it's one less thing...
Greg: Indeed. And we also had to make digital and physical copies of important documents, like the passports and the global entry cards, and just for us to leave behind with...with our contact, my mom.
Jen: Yeah.
Greg: Hi, Mom. Uh, some other documents that we did have to utilize for Mom to help us out was power of attorney. So that if there's anything that needs to happen but we can't accomplish it because we are out of the country Mom now has the authority to pay bills or or to see bank statements or anything that may need to happen. We also had to make a last will and testament.
Jen: Yeah.
Greg: ...and we needed a living will and end-of-life plans. And we felt really old going through that process.
Jen: Yeah, fun story. Two big days. The end-of-life plans, we weirdly did on Greg's 45th birthday.
Greg: (laughs)
Jen: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! And then we met with the attorney and signed all of these documents on Valentine's Day, so it was super romantic.
Greg: Yeah, but it had to get done.
Jen: (simultaneously) It's done.
Greg: There's also the medical side stuff we needed to do.
Jen: If we need medical attention, emergency surgeries, evacuation from the country. In the event something tragic happens we have coverage to get us back on United States soil. And one thing that I didn't really think of when we started this whole thing was, "what are we gonna do with prescriptions?". Because it's not like we're gonna be able to run to the local Walgreens, or the Walmart, to be able to refill it. Some of your insurance - if you're not aware - have a vacation override where if you need to fill your prescription before you leave for an extended amount of time, they'll let you.
Greg: Yes. Also vaccinations...
Jen: So let me just, uh, give you a little more detail. The CDC has a handy tool that you can go in and type whatever country - it has all the countries listed - and it'll tell you the recommended vaccinations that you should get before traveling.
Greg: So we had to get Hepatitis A and B
Jen: The Hepatitis A and B, they recommend if you plan on eating street food. And since one of our main things was eat...
Greg: (interrupts) Yeah, I'm gonna eat all the food I don't care if it's on the street or not...
Jen: (laughs) So we decided, yeah, let's go ahead and get that.
Greg: We also got flu shots. Tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis vaccination. The other piece that I had to take care of with regards to the medical...is my CPAP. I ordinarily use a ResMed 11. The important piece is it's got a humidifier which requires distilled water. And we really didn't want to have to lug distilled water across the world. But there's something called a "mini" which uses humidifier discs and you don't use water at all. So we went ahead and got one of those with a few supplies to keep me going for, uh, several months. There's also the tech side that we had to take care of - like phone plans - when you're gonna be outside of the US for the long term. And I actually learned that most phone companies...if you do not touch a US-based cell tower for 90 days, they disable your data plan and/or your phone functionality. So I had to check with various providers to see if we needed to switch. And at the end of the day, Google Fi told us explicitly, we would lose data functionality after 90 days of no US cell tower connection. But as long as we're on WiFi the phone number will be active and it will operate kind of normally. They did advise, "it's WiFi only, so take adequate precautions." Dude, I'm already on a VPN, we already use Signal, I think I'm good.
Jen: (laughs)
Greg: And they were like, "Well, it sounds like you are prepared".
Jen: Yeah, so kind of in the vein of preparing...one of the things we did do was go to Google Maps. And I didn't know this at all, so maybe this will be a hot tip for anybody else. You can actually download maps of the places you're going so you can use them just like you would normally, but without using any data on your phone. So I went through all the countries that we're going to be in, downloaded those. So now, even if we don't have data service or we're not able to hit a WiFi spot, we'll be able to use the map.
Greg: Yeah.
Jen: I guess we could talk about the spreadsheet...
Greg: Yeah, dude... the spreadsheet is great!
Jen: Our pièce de résistance!
Greg: Heck, yes it is.
Jen: Google Docs again. We came up with a spreadsheet because we're like, “we want to know how much this is costing us.” So we tracked everything by city, put the cost of the tours we booked, hotels, that kind of stuff. And then...we added a fancy little pie chart so we can see percentage of what we've spent and how much it's costing us per day. So…super cool.
Greg: Yeah, I feel like you're underselling it, too, because it's color-coded.
Jen: Oh, yes.
Greg: And it has calculations for how much we've spent in total, how much we're spending per day and total number of days that we have planned out.
Jen: It really is a thing of beauty. (laughs)
Greg: Yeah. Yeah, it is.
Jen: We're pretty proud of it.
Greg: Yeah.
Jen: One of the other things we had to do was book train tickets because, like we mentioned before, we don't want to spend too much time flying. So we're going to do a lot of train travel. I'm kind of excited about that - and a little nervous - because I've never ridden a train other than the one at the Audubon Zoo.
Greg: It was neat planning the train travel because there's a system of trains in Europe and purchasing tickets was pretty simple, really.
Jen: So I'll probably be singing all the train songs that I can think of.
Greg: What? Train songs? So what are all the train songs you can think of?
Jen: Oh…you can go way back in the country music days, I'm sure and find a bunch.
Greg: Ok, so what constitutes a train song then?
Jen: (laughs) It's the perfect country and western song. Trucks and trains and women.
Greg: I think you're dodging the question.
Jen: ...prison.
Greg: Look...what makes it a train song? Do they just have to say the word 'train' and you think it's a train song?
Jen: I mean...
Greg: Would all songs by Train be train songs?
Jen: Ugh. No. Anyway, we'll get back...I'll report back on train songs. I know I'm right. So hopefully our random conversation just kind of helped you guys understand a little bit more about what we've been doing, what we've been planning. So there's a lot of quote, unquote grown-up things we had to do this time might not be as fun as normal. But we got it done and we feel like we've prepared as much as we can for this.
Greg: So, thank you for checking in.
Jen: And we'll see you at the next stop!
